Budget discord: What happens now?

Now that the House has approved Rep. Paul Ryan’s 2014 budget, and the Senate will spend the next several hours haggling over its spending plan, Congress has to figure out whether there’s any common ground that could put the nation on sound fiscal footing.

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As Congress enters a two-week recess, the path forward is hazy, at best.

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said he has not had any conversations with Senate leaders about a budget conference committee, where Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) could hash out their vastly different views for America.

But Boehner, speaking after the 221-207 vote in favor of Ryan’s budget, gave a clue as to how difficult it will be. He believes tax increases are a non-starter, while Senate Democrats count them as a key part of their budget.

“Listen, they’re going to have a conversation I’m sure,” Boehner said Thursday. “We’ve got a spending problem that has to be addressed. I believe that the revenue discussion is over. It’s time to cut spending. The American people know we have a spending problem. You have to attack that by…cutting spending.”

But Boehner said he believes that the budget process offers Washington its “best opportunity” to deal with the fiscal entanglements of the next few months, which includes lifting the nation’s debt limit this summer.

The differences between the Senate Democrat and House Republican budget plans are endless.

Ryan — who was the 2012 Republican vice presidential nominee — penned a spending plan aims to bring the federal books into balance in a decade by repealing President Barack Obama’s health care law, overhauling Medicare, rewriting the Tax Code and paring back government spending.

Only 10 Republicans opposed the plan. All Democrats voted against it.

It’s the third year in a row that Boehner’s majority has passed a budget, but the first year since the GOP took the House that the Senate majority will do one at the same time.

”We’ve done the hard work of bringing this plan forward,” Boehner said on the floor before the vote. “But this budget does more than just balance, it helps improve the lives and … addresses the things that are important to American families.”

The 10 Republicans who voted against the budget were Reps. Justin Amash of Michigan, Paul Broun and Phil Gingrey of Georgia, Rick Crawford of Arkansas, Randy Forbes of Virginia, Chris Gibson of New York, Joe Heck of Nevada, Walter Jones of North Carolina, Thomas Massie of Kentucky and David McKinley of West Virginia.

Lawmakers’ concerns ranged from the budget being too timid, too tough on Medicare and Jones has said he’s not voting for bills that continue to fund the war in Afghanistan.

Ryan’s budget was the only one that passed the House — no alternative came close. The Democratic budget, presented by Maryland Rep. Chris Van Hollen, garnered only 165 votes — 28 Democrats voted against it. The conservative Republican Study Committee’s budget, which balances the budget in four years, also failed, with 118 GOP lawmakers opposing it. Democrats voted “present” on the RSC’s spending plan, using a procedural gimmick to tweak Republicans. The Senate Democrats’ budget, which was put on the floor by GOP Rep. Mick Mulvaney of South Carolina, garnered 154 Democratic votes. The Congressional Black Caucus’s budget failed, 105 to 305, and the Congressional Progressive Caucus’s resolution went down, 84 to 327.

The week of budget votes — which took place before a two-week Congressional recess — is only the most recent fiscal battle in Washington. It was sandwiched in the middle of a year in which Republicans are caught between yearning to move beyond budgetary skirmishes and being wholly consumed by them. When Congress returns from its spring break, lawmakers will begin to wrestle with raising the debt limit, an issue that is expected to come up sometime between May and July.